Admin

Basic Information

Intelligent Design is the assertion that certain aspects of the universe and/or living beings are unlikely to have evolved randomly, and thus are best explained by the existence of an "intelligent designer".

See Also

Sources

Game and Story Use

In many fantasy worlds, "Intelligent Design" is literal truth - gods or similar powerful beings created the world and everything in it.

Note that they might not actually have intended how the current ecosystem. For example, in quite a few mythologies the gods ended up being fairly disappointed by humanity…

As long as you start out with some intelligent beings (with whatever justification you can come up with), you might have a process similar to evolution without any random mutation driving the process - the sapient beings could create new life forms (through genetic engineering or equivalents) for new purposes as the need arises, and those creatures would then compete against each other within the ecosystem, with the most "fit" creatures becoming predominant.

Such a system need not be "stable", either - different groups might introduce different creatures for different purposes (one wants herd animals which they can eat and make use of, others want crops which yield lots of grains, yet which are inedible by the same herd animals). The competition between different cultures might even result in predators, parasites, weeds and other creatures which attack the staples and environment of other cultures.

Imagine a world where creating new creatures is relatively easy (through the right magical "blessing" or "curses" by the local shaman or magical adept) - but where understanding of the scientific principles of ecosystems is rather limited. In such an environment, new creatures and plants will soon proliferate, with chaotic results.

In such a world, the original sapient beings might also start to alter themselves. See Transhumanism for ideas on this.